Siel Ju's Blog, page 8
February 9, 2018
See you at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery 3/1 (or in Mexico / La Verne)
I’ve never been to Mexico, but that’s about to change. Next week, I’m heading south to San Miguel de Allende for the San Miguel Writer’s Conference and Literary Festival. The event features literary luminaries like Sandra Cisneros and Rita Dove — plus a workshop by me!
Will you be there? If so, I hope to see you at the workshop I’m teaching:
Writing Creatively in the Second Person
Sunday, Feb. 18, 9 am to 10:30 am
Hotel Real de Minas, San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico
Can’t make it...
February 5, 2018
Boxwalla Book Box — Feb 2018 giveaway
If your 2018 goal was to get out of a reading rut, you’re in luck. This month’s giveaway is a Boxwalla Book Box that’ll introduce you to new, unexpected, international reads!
In case you missed my previous rave about Boxwalla Book Box: This subscription box service promises to send you two new reads at a time — featuring writers from all over the world. Boxwalla’s picks are pretty idiosyncratic — “All of them are must-read but not as widely read as they deserve to be,” claims the website — a...
February 1, 2018
January book reviews: Fire & other dangers
Brief reviews of books by contemporary authors I read this month — along with photos of what I ate while reading. The list is ordered by the level of my enjoyment:
Fire Sermon by Jamie Quatro (Grove Press, 2018)
“I admit that unless something is forbidden I cannot want it with any intensity.”
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On the surface Fire Sermon is about a married woman who has a few brief assignations with a man married to someone else. Beneath that plot is a gorgeous work about desire and longing and obsession and...
January 22, 2018
Patty Yumi Cottrell gets evasive with invasive questions
Every month, I interview an author I admire on her literary firsts.
Los Angeles lost another great writer to New York when Patty Yumi Cottrell moved back to the east coast last year. But the author of Sorry to Disrupt the Peace, this month’s giveaway, got a lot of writing done while she was in the City of Angeles — so you can expect to read her hilarious-sad work in the months to come.
I got to chat with Patty about doing things differently and writing for a whiskey company and getting confl...
January 20, 2018
See you at Vermin on the Mount San Diego 1/20!
I realize this is rather late notice, but I’m reading from Cake Time tonight Vermin on the Mount San Diego and would love to see you there!
What: Vermin on the Mount San Diego
When: Saturday, January 20, 2018, 7 pm
Where: La Bodega Gallery, 2196 Logan Ave., San Diego.
Hosted by Jim Ruland, Vermin on the Mount is one of my favorite reading series — so much so that I wrote a long piece about it for Literary Hub — and the only one I know of with events in both San Diego and Los Angeles.
For eac...
January 2, 2018
Sorry to Disrupt the Peace by Patty Yumi Cottrell — Jan 2018 giveaway
What I love most about Patty Yumi Cottrell’s writing: the sudden moments of humor within the bleakest of moods:
A little self-knowledge can be a very productive thing, I said to no one. I am a very productive person, I said as I opened the windows of my shared studio apartment. I shouted things to the passersby on the crummy sidewalks below. I can be a very helpful person! I screamed. A woman pushing a double-wide stroller looked up at me with concern. At your service, bitches! I shouted.
Thi...
December 27, 2017
December book reviews: End of year reads
Brief reviews of books by contemporary authors I read this month — along with photos of what I ate while reading. The list is ordered by the level of my enjoyment:
Things That Happened Before the Earthquake by Chiara Barzini (Doubleday 2017)
“Everyone said where they were and what they heard when it happened. Some had sad stories, some head happy stories.”
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Chiara Barzini’s debut novel reminded me that the ’90s was actually a rather violent and volatile time in Los Angeles, what with the L....
December 20, 2017
Chiara Barzini says fiction is your secret lover
Every month, I interview an author I admire on her literary firsts.
Coming-of-age stories set in Los Angeles: It’s a subgenre of sorts that’s growing in size, that holds within it wildly different books. I love these L.A. stories so much I wrote one myself — and read with a thrill Chiara Barzini’s volatile and beautiful novel Things That Happened Before the Earthquake too. (full review here)
Chiara was born in Italy but spent some formative years in L.A. and other places in the U.S. before mo...
December 4, 2017
December giveaway: Things That Happened Before the Earthquake by Chiara Barzini
When I think of the ’90s, I think Nirvana, Beverly Hills 90210, and long stretches of childhood boredom. But Chiara Barzini’s debut novel reminded me that the ’90s was actually a rather violent and volatile time in Los Angeles, what with the L.A. Riots, the Northridge Earthquake, and of course, the O.J. Simpson Trial.
Which is to say — reading Chiara’s debut novel, Things That Happened Before the Earthquake, was a fascinating experience for me, at once a trip down memory lane and a thrilling...
December 1, 2017
See you at a literary celebration 12/10
Celebrate the literary holiday season with me and last month’s featured author, David Rocklin! The two of us will be reading together at a very special event: a joint Library Girl and Roar Shack reading and celebration.
Both Library Girl and Roar Shack are local monthly reading series that happen on the second Sunday of the month — the former on the westside, the latter on the east. Now the two have joined forces for a big end-of-the-year event!
